


FEET, née Making Love in the Rum

by canolacrush



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Fluff, Frolicking through Freudian Fields, Humor, Ice Cream, M/M, Married Couple, Romance, as in they are literally married
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2014-04-26
Packaged: 2018-01-20 20:26:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1524455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canolacrush/pseuds/canolacrush
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock deduces, then invents, John's favourite ice cream flavour.</p>
            </blockquote>





	FEET, née Making Love in the Rum

**Author's Note:**

  * For [azriona](https://archiveofourown.org/users/azriona/gifts).



> Because I desperately needed cathartic fluff and asked for writing prompts, and azriona supplied me with "deducing John's favorite flavor of ice cream." WRITTEN IN ONE LONG CATHARTIC BLUR OVER SEVERAL HOURS, followed by sleep, followed by more alert self-editing afterwards. YAY CATHARSIS!

John hated chocolate. He didn’t even bother humouring chocolate. He’d only eat anything chocolate-y if it was forced upon him and he was too polite to refuse. Chocolate was right out.

In fact, Sherlock was fairly certain John didn’t like sweet things at all. Which was not only unfathomable, it was inconvenient. Especially inconvenient _now_ , because after consulting with Molly, she’d made it clear that the only thing that would resolve John’s current upset at him over the completely accidental deletion of the date of their anniversary (the second one, with the rings, not the first one—he always remembered the first one) was flowers and chocolate—except John was not partial to flowers and he hated chocolate so the alternative they’d decided on was romantic ice cream and grovelling because apparently sugar needed to be involved for reconciliation to succeed. 

Sherlock wasn’t worried about the grovelling. He was an expert at grovelling and could cry on cue when necessary, no problems there.

But overcoming John’s complete lack of sweet tooth was a challenge and trying to discover what sort of ice cream flavour that he would not only tolerate but perhaps also find enjoyable enough to activate enough serotonin in his brain that he’d be in a better mood to forgive Sherlock and accept the grovelling was difficult.

As far as Sherlock could tell, John was not overly taken with fruit. He ate the occasional apple and drank orange juice and if he was feeling daring he ate a banana, but besides that golden triumvirate of fruit he did not venture into the wild worlds of strawberry or raspberry or heaven forbid something as exotic as kiwifruit.

_Banana—banana split? No, there’s chocolate again, damn._

_Orange sherbet? …Leave open as possibility._

Every other fruit and chocolate-involved flavour he deleted from the list. He was left with a very limited selection of possibilities.

He was dimly fearful that John would favour something as unimaginative as _vanilla_ , which hardly seemed a likely ingredient for efficient and expedient reconciliation at all. However, John was also a creature of excitement and daring-do, so Sherlock was reasonably confident that if he were to favour a flavour, the flavour would also have a touch of the unusual.

 _PROTEIN_ , his mind yelped helpfully as he tore through the East Wing of the Mind Palace, where John-things were. _HE LIKES PROTEIN_.

…Was there such a thing as steak-flavoured ice cream? Surely there must be. It was the 21st century and they lived in civilisation.

But—no, _better_ —nuts, something with nuts in. John would like something with nuts in. Yes. He’d seen John eat nuts before. He liked them. Walnuts maybe. Cashews? Peanuts? Nutmeg? Yes, nutmeg. Nutmeg is used in Indian curries, John would like nutmeg. Ground up finely.

He reviewed mental data and confirmed that John didn’t appear to have any allergies toward nuts of any sort. Good.

But the _base_ , what would the base ice cream flavour be? Preferably something with as minimal a sweet factor as possible, but sweet enough to have the proper effect. The base was essential, and he needed to get it just right or everything would go horrifically wrong and John would downgrade Sherlock’s residence of exile from the sofa to the roof.

 _Butterscotch?!_ his mind wailed desperately. _No no no, too sweet, too sweet._

_Coffee? Yes, possibly, maybe, wait, **NO** , no no no, he doesn’t trust me with coffee, coffee is lies, not coffee._

_RUM? …YES. RUM. Alcohol is pleasure-inducing, and slightly tipsy John is a happy John, yes, rum base ice cream, excellent, exemplary, exquisite._

He whipped out his phone and scrolled through all available ice cream stores and parlours in London that made their ice cream on site. He paused over a familiar-looking one and recalled that he’d helped the owner out of a sticky situation once.

In seconds, he’d bolted for the nearest cab, told the driver to step on it, and before he knew it he was bursting through the doors of Twisted Sisters.

“Enrico, it’s an emergency,” he declared.

Enrico looked up from the Tiger-Tiger double-scoop cone he was handing off to a curly-haired, freckled child. He grinned a gold-toothed grin and spread his tattooed arms in a gesture of welcome.

“Of course, Mr. Holmes!” Enrico boomed. “It’s been far too long since I’ve given you a free scoop!”

***

Sherlock returned home armed with a pail of the concoction Enrico had whimsically dubbed “Making Love in the Rum” and immediately put it in the freezer to chill overnight. Between the two of them, with Enrico’s expertise in flavour combinations and Sherlock’s knowledge of John’s taste preferences, they eventually had settled on a dark rum ice cream base seasoned with a hint of nutmeg powder throughout and a pinch of bitters added in to balance the sugar content. Enrico informed him they’d essentially created rum punch in ice cream form and had suggested adding in lime juice for the “one of sour” to go along with the traditional Bajan recipe, but Sherlock had rejected that idea in favour of not exposing John to strange foreign fruit that he may or may not like. However, Enrico had also made other suggestions for garnishes that could be useful—a stick of cinnamon, perhaps with cherries tied to the stick to make it look more “romantic.” Sherlock decided that as long as the cherries weren’t infused in the ice cream that it would be acceptable. He was confident he could origami the cherries into a heart somehow. John liked hearts if they were subtle. 

But he still had to wait out the night for the ice cream to set properly. He also needed to set the stage in order for the presentation to achieve the desired effect. Furthermore, he needed to practice his cherry-arranging skills.

Then there was the challenge of ensuring that John did not discover the surprise before it was ready.

Sherlock took a bunch of sticky notes and plastered them all over the pail in the freezer to disguise its colourful packaging and Enrico’s whimsical label, then he wrote “FEET” in big red letters over the sticky notes. Disguise complete.

Now all he had to do was arrange everything overnight while John slept and greet him with the surprise when he woke up the following morning.

Actually, this would be easier than he expected.

Sherlock started slightly when he heard John open the door to their kitchen. He was holding grocery bags; he gave Sherlock a bland look as he came in the room and set the bags next to the microscope.

“You should have taken an umbrella,” Sherlock commented as he observed the rain spots on John’s coat.

John just sighed and began unloading the groceries. Sherlock watched carefully as he put a package of boneless chicken breasts in the freezer next to “FEET.” John paused, then looked to Sherlock and pointed at “FEET.”

“That better be sealed,” he stated.

“It is sealed,” Sherlock confirmed.

John went back to ignoring him and proceeded as such for the rest of the night. He hadn’t suspected anything. _Success_.

***

After John went to bed, Sherlock put on a recording of him playing violin so that John wouldn’t suspect he was doing anything else in the kitchen and living room. He cleared off the kitchen table and “tidied” (the clutter was put on the stairs leading to John’s old room, where it could easily be retrieved at a later point in time). Then he nipped downstairs to borrow Mrs. Hudson’s least irritating tablecloth and draped it over the table. He found all fifty-eight candles that he owned and set them up throughout the flat, though he made sure to put the skull-shaped ones somewhere not immediately visible while the red ones were given the more prominent position of kitchen table.

The trickiest part was sneaking into his room while John was still asleep so he could grab a fresh set of clothes—including the violet shirt that John preferred on him—and retreat into the bath to freshen up. Luckily, he knew where all the creaky boards were and how to open and close all the doors so they didn’t squeak. John slept on, though he’d twitched and nuzzled into Sherlock’s pillow as Sherlock crept by. It was an endearing sight, and Sherlock had paused to watch his husband sleep for a moment before continuing on.

After determining himself irresistible, Sherlock moved back into the kitchen to set up the centrepiece to this whole endeavour. He burrowed in the cupboards for their matrimonial graduated cylinders, gave them a quick rinse, then placed them on the table. He retrieved “FEET, née Making Love in the Rum” and peeled off the lid, pleased to find that the ice cream had set as promised. 

Then he realised they did not own an ice cream scoop and that he was still short of cinnamon sticks and cherries. He slinked down to Mrs. Hudson’s and acquired the ingredients and scoop from her cupboards, along with two excessively long-handled fancy dessert spoons because old ladies always possessed such things even though they never used them. He tiptoed back upstairs and carefully began manoeuvring the brownish-yellow creamy clumps into the cylinders, packing down the scoops with the handles of the spoons as necessary. To his annoyance, the ice cream tended to dribble and melt over the sides and onto the tablecloth since the diameter of the scoops tended to be larger than the diameter of the cylinders, and the process of packing the scoops down broke off small melty splinters. Eventually he found paper serviettes and wiped off the worst of the mess, but even so, the damage had been done. He just hoped John—and Mrs. Hudson, since it was her tablecloth—wouldn’t notice.

Sticking in a cinnamon stick for each, Sherlock fished out two wet cherries from the jar and carefully wound the stems around the cinnamon, hoping the stick wouldn’t break. It did not. He surveyed his handiwork.

To his dismay, the cherries didn’t resemble a heart shape at all. In fact, as soon as he’d let go of them, they’d drooped, though they still stayed on the stick. They looked like bright red testicles hanging from a cinnamon prick. Which had been shoved into an ice cream mass inside a graduated cylinder. This was not romantic at all.

It was _perfect_.

He hastened to set up the other one the same way, then tied on two red bows at the bases of the cylinders for the finishing touch. He checked his watch. Exactly one minute to six, which is the time John usually woke up when he was in a bad mood.

Sherlock teleported to the fireplace. He spot-checked the crazier of the curls so they were in place and set himself up in Sophisticated Contemplation Position, arms behind his back and staring deeply into the mirror. The soft sounds of his violin playing through a twelfth repeat of the violin half of Dvořák’s _Romantic Pieces_ (Opus 75) carried through the flat, and he could hear the distant creak of floorboards and the soft pad of John’s feet moving in the bedroom and bathroom. It was followed by the sound of a toilet flushing and water running in the pipes. Then a door opened and John stepped into the kitchen.

Sherlock turned elegantly to face him. “Good morning, John.”

John was standing there in his housecoat and slippers, hair still ruffled from sleep and stubble darkening his cheeks, with mystified wide eyes.

“What?” John said, after a long pause.

“Good morning,” Sherlock repeated with a smile.

John blinked. “Okay,” he said, then turned around and started shuffling back to the bedroom. Sherlock swooped after him and snagged his arm. “Jesus Christ, it’s not a dream,” John blurted when Sherlock’s hand made contact.

Sherlock gave him an affronted look and guided him back into the kitchen and sat him down in a chair in front of the ice creams. “You make it sound as though I’m incapable of doing something nice,” he said, gliding to the other side of the table to take the opposite chair.

“No, I’m sure you can when it suits you,” John said flippantly, staring with furrowed brows at the cylinders. He pointed at them. “Those…are from our wedding, aren’t they?”

“They are,” Sherlock replied with a nod, watching him avidly.

John sent him a cautious, squinty-eyed, still-sort-of-waking-up look. “Candles,” he stated, with a nod to the red ones decorating the table.

“Yes.”

“Our wedding glasses.”

“Cylinders.”

“Cylinders,” John said. He squinted at them. “Is that ice cream?”

“Yes,” Sherlock confirmed.

“I’m…not that fond of sweets, you know.”

“I am aware, John. Try some. You might be surprised.”

John hesitantly reached for one of the cylinders and pulled it toward him, picking up a dessert spoon and scooping out a tiny spoonful. He put it in his mouth and made a surprised noise, both eyebrows lifting.

“Wow, that’s…” he began, then furrowed his eyebrows again. “Quite rummy.”

“Do you like it?” Sherlock asked calmly, though inwardly he was panicking.

John fished out the cinnamon stick and sucked contemplatively on the ice-creamed end of it. A small, hungry twinge surged through Sherlock at the sight, because he was remembering how they should’ve had anniversary sex two nights ago and he’d also mostly forgotten to eat since that day. John took another bite of the ice cream proper with the spoon and made a humming sound; Sherlock licked his lips.

“It’s interesting,” John decided, continuing to eat. He sent Sherlock a tiny smile, and it was like a ray of sunshine bursting through overcast London. “Bit early for rum, though. And for ice cream.”

“It’s Saturday,” Sherlock said dismissively, reaching for the companion cylinder and picking up a spoon. He tasted this particular batch (there’d been three rejected candidates) for the first time in its completion and was surprised at the faint explosion of alcohol and bittersweet spices on his tongue, overlaid with sugar-cream. He blinked a few times. “Interesting is certainly the word for it,” he agreed.

“Did you not know what flavour it was before you picked it?” John asked incredulously, nevertheless still eating.

“FEET,” Sherlock answered with a smirk, and John instantly coughed and spluttered.

John glared at him. Sherlock remembered he was supposed to be romantic and grovelling.

“Initially, it was called ‘Making Love in the Rum,’” Sherlock mumbled around the spoon, casting his eyes downwards. “I didn’t want you to find it before it was finished solidifying.”

“ _Making lo_ —wait, you _made_ this?” John asked.

Sherlock looked up. John seemed to be impressed. That was a good sign. “Technically, Enrico made it. I oversaw the production and provided feedback.”

John set the cylinder down. “This is you being romantic,” he stated.

“Is it working?” Sherlock replied hopefully, putting on his most charming smile.

John tilted his head with an inscrutable quirk to his lips. “It’s two days late.”

Sherlock shifted his gaze downwards. “I _am_ sorry about that,” he mumbled. “But lateness is rather my specialty,” he dared to add with a tiny, playful glance upwards.

John snorted. “Yes, yes it is,” he chuckled. “And so is drama.”

Sherlock nodded in agreement. He felt John’s hand close warmly overtop his own where it rested on the table. He looked up, directly into John’s adoring blue eyes.

“It’s lovely, Sherlock,” he said with a smile.

“Happy belated, John,” Sherlock answered, turning over his hand so they were palm-to-palm, surrounded in candlelight, and gazing at each other over two vaguely Freudian desserts.

“Why ice cream, though?” John asked curiously. He dunked the cinnamon penis back into the mixture and sucked on the end.

Sherlock contemplated telling him the real answer, which was because Molly had told him to, but John was sending him a very encouraging set of bedroom eyes and he sensed that something wittier would exponentially expedite the seduction at hand, whether it be entirely truthful or no.

He retrieved his own cinnamon stick from the cylinder and closed his mouth around it, slowly sliding it out. He was rewarded with the sight of John’s pupils dilating, and he smirked, knowing his next line would be the cherry on top. The answer was simple.

“Because it doesn’t take long to melt.”


End file.
